182 players prepare for Day 3 of the LA Poker Classic

With late registration open until the start of Day 2 on Saturday the World Poker Tour LA Poker Classic saw the total number of entrants jump from the 523 players who registered on Friday to 549 by the time the tournament recommenced on Saturday. At the end of Day 2 the field had been whittled down to just 182 hopefuls, including a number of the top poker players in the world.

Nobody ran away with the chip-lead on Saturday, considering the top 3 players on the leader-board are separated by less than 5,000 chips, or about 2% of their total stacks. A remarkable 19 former WPT Champions are still in the hunt for the LA Poker Classic title including Barry Greenstein, Jonathan Little, Scott Seiver, Erick Lindgren, Joe Hachem, John Hennigan, JC Tran, Gavin Griffin, and perhaps the biggest name in poker Phil Ivey.

With the field now set, the World Poker Tour released the official payout schedule for the tournament, which will see 54 players make the money, with the winner walking away with over $1.3 million, while a min-cash is worth just over $20,000. Here is a look at the complete payout schedule for the Season X LA Poker Classic:

* 1st place: $1,370,240

* 2nd place: $806,370

* 3rd place: $521,770

* 4th place: $355,750

* 5th place: $252,980

* 6th place: $202,910

* 7th place: $155,480

* 8th place: $110,680

* 9th place: $79,060

* 10 – 12th place: $60,610

* 13 – 15th place: $47,430

* 16 – 18th place: $39,530

* 19 – 27th place: $34,260

* 28 – 36th place: $28,990

* 37 – 45th place: $23,720

* 46 – 54th place: $21,080

And here is a look at the Top 10 chip-counts heading into Sunday’s Day 3 action at the LA Poker Classic:

1. Gordon Vayo — 284,000

2. Behzad Teranie — 280,000

3. Greg Mueller — 279,700

4. Darren Elias — 257,400

5. Vasile Buboi — 238,700

6. Keith Ferrera — 235,100

7. Eric Cloutier — 231,300

8. Joe Tehan — 223,200

9. Barry Woods — 206,600

10. Shaun Deeb — 197,400

Perhaps the biggest story developing is Phil Ivey, who returned to poker at the 2012 Aussie Million after a nearly year-long sabbatical, final tabling the Main Event and winning the $250k Super-High-Roller event at the Aussie Millions. Ivey is currently in the middle of the pack with just over 100,000 chips at the LAPC.

Another story emerging is Jason Somerville. The long-time poker pro recently became the first openly gay male poker player, and a win at the LAPC could bring a lot of positive attention to Somerville from a variety of outlets –this would most certainly be a story the mainstream media would pick-up on.

This entry was posted
on Sunday, February 26th, 2012 at 8:20 am and is filed under Poker News.
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